“I mean — I mean, first of all, it’s insulting,” he said. “This would be like Wal-Mart having a bad week and going, ‘The customers have really been unruly.’ I mean, the job of a political leader in part is to understand the people. If we can’t offer a better future that is believable to more people, we’re not going to win.”

Gingrich also laid it on Romney on Thursday of this week with an “Overheard with Evan Smith“ interview on KLRU-TV, the PBS station in Austin, Texas. Gingrich said he was disappointed with Romney’s analysis of why he lost the election, calling it “insulting and profoundly wrong.” When pressed for further details, Gingrich explained that elections are not just about buying votes.

“It reduces us to economic entities who have no passion, no idealism, no dreams, no philosophy,” he said. “And if it had been that simple, my question would have been, ‘Why didn’t you outbid him?'”

He said Super PACs could have donated money for gifts instead of TV ads. Gingrich then joked about how the Republicans could have gone about their gift distribution, comparing them to Indians with gift-giving ceremonies.

“He could have gone town by town and said, ‘Come here and let me give you gifts. Here are Republican gifts,'” Gingrich said dryly. “They could have an elephant coming in with gifts on it.”